Pond Boss Forums STOCKING A NEW POND Creating the food chain Stocking an empty lake

Hi guys I've been a reader of the site for a while now and now I have my own question about stocking. I did a couple unsuccessful searches but I think I have a unique situation.

My grandpa bought a big slough back in the 60's that was almost dry but great for duck hunting. Since then, it has filled in and developed into an almost 250 acre lake. This lake has an average depth of 5-7 feet deep, big patches of submerged weeds, as well as sandy muddy and rocky bottoms. I know there is a ton of food in there because there is a man who has been taking bait from the lake for years and every time we pull our decoys out of the water there are tons of freshwater shrimp on the keel of the deke. I'm sure there is no game fish in the lake as I have spent a lot of time on it and have even tried fishing and even putting traps out to catch fish with no luck as well as never seeing any floaters.

My goal is to stock it with yellow perch, but I have very limited funds at the moment. I thought about trying to transfer as many as I can from nearby lakes before the spawn this spring. Would this work? Any comments or tips are appreciated.

The only caveat to transferring fish from one body of water to another is parasites and possibly invasive plants in the water.

Look up how to do a salt dip with the fish, and I would "rinse" the fish in at least 3 different containers before putting them in the lake. That large of a lake would be expensive to treat if you introduced an invasive plant species. With it being that shallow, it would over run the lake in short order.

If there are no fish, I'm suspicious that the thing winterkills with some regularity.

esshup, Its very rare I hear about salt dips or "baths"... Great info!!!

Welcome to Pond Boss MGO!!!

It wont cost much to put in a few pounds minimum of FHM for forage and wait a year or two. Then save some money for some good stockers of YP.

A shallow lake in SD could easily winterkill during harsh winters with lots of deep extended snow cover (10-16wks). This is likely why there are very few sport fish in the lake. No doubt others have tried to stock it previously. Many of the prairie lakes in the north central US 'freeze out' (winterkill). A lot of fish farms use freeze out lakes to annually grow minnows and stocker sport fish; stock in spring harvest in fall. The main thing that will minimize that is if the lake gets lots of snow free ice due to wind action across the ice. A good fish to start with is the YP since it tolerates low dissolved oxygen concentrations better than most sport fish. However I would still try the DIY stocking to see how well they survive. If you get some mild winters you will have success.

Devils Lake has a good population of YP that do well feeding on the freshwater shrimp in that BOW. But, I think it's deep enough so it doesn't have winterkill problems.

Note that Devils Lake ND is a completely different type of lake than the 250 acre weedy lake described above by MGO. Devils Lk averages 23 ft deep with maximum depth of around 53ft and both morphometric features allows the lake biology to tolerate extended ice & snow cover.

Bill, I had no idea it was that deep! I thought it was shallower.

Devils Lake apparently has a wide fluctuation of depth depending on rain fall and which area of the big lake you are on. The lake has numerous large bays or sections. Each bay is fairly unique as far as depths; some shallow, some deep and some in-between. See the link for a map of depth contours of each section.
http://www.fishingbuddy.com/devils_lake

Dang Bill, Now I have to look up "morphometric"